Combined χ~((3)) microscopy of the peripheral nervous tissue

摘要

We report an application of the combined third order microscopy techniques to reveal structure and morphology of the peripheral nerve in mice. The resonant Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) and third harmonic generation (THG) techniques have been applied to visualize structure of the myelinated peripheral axon. While CARS was quite efficient in selective imaging of the cladding layer via characteristic Raman active vibrations of dense lipid structures constituting the layers, the THG microscopy helped to clearly reveal the degree of optical and nonlinear optical inhomogeneity of the axon core (that may have further important implications)